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The Leaving Gene: Essays on Staying, Going, and the Cost of Both
Not yet published
Expected 27 Oct 26“Original, exceptional, emotionally and intellectually engaging… each essay is a literary gem that will linger long after the final page.” — Midwest Book Review
A dog sits by the door. Not dramatically. Not pacing. Just there—listening for something that, as far as he knows, could still happen.
The Leaving Gene is a memoir-in-essays about staying, going, and the cost of both. Funny in the way life is funny when the alternative is worse, these essays explore family, friendship, grief, identity, chosen family, and the quiet ways we learn to leave before someone else has the chance.
Huck Smith has always been good at leaving—building the exit before anything gets close enough to cost him something. But this isn’t a book about running away. It’s about what happens when you finally stay long enough to understand what you’ve been running from.
A dog sits by the door. Not dramatically. Not pacing. Just there—listening for something that, as far as he knows, could still happen.
The Leaving Gene is a memoir-in-essays about staying, going, and the cost of both. Funny in the way life is funny when the alternative is worse, these essays explore family, friendship, grief, identity, chosen family, and the quiet ways we learn to leave before someone else has the chance.
Huck Smith has always been good at leaving—building the exit before anything gets close enough to cost him something. But this isn’t a book about running away. It’s about what happens when you finally stay long enough to understand what you’ve been running from.
301 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication October 27, 2026
About the author
Huck Smith
2 books7 followersHuck Smith is a writer whose work explores identity, relationships, family, grief, survival, and the quiet contradictions that shape everyday life. His essays often land somewhere between self-awareness and self-sabotage, written with equal parts humor, honesty, and emotional precision.
When he’s not writing, he’s probably at the gym, overthinking a text message, or convincing himself he doesn’t need another vintage action figure while actively bidding on one.
When he’s not writing, he’s probably at the gym, overthinking a text message, or convincing himself he doesn’t need another vintage action figure while actively bidding on one.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Author
Huck Smith spends the first stretch of The Leaving Gene making you laugh, and somebody should probably warn you about that.
A gray pube, then several, spotted in a tanning booth, in the kind of light that shows everything, by a man who grew up thinking the Golden Girls at 52 were finished. A 65-inch Roku mounted two and a half inches too low because there was nobody standing behind him to say a little higher, so the top of the console is permanently unusable now. An extra Ninja Creami container bought before the Ninja Creami, by the version of himself who was already optimizing the workflow for a machine he did not own yet. The machine arrived. He made frozen chocolate chalk. Twice.
I was several essays in, comfortable, laughing, pretty sure I knew what kind of book I had.
Then he is on Facebook and one of his sister’s friends claims to be a cousin. Huck knows she isn’t. She tells Huck that his sister does not have a brother. He starts posting childhood photos as proof he exists. Four or five in, he refreshes. Page not found.
Then a DNA test tells him the man who raised him is not his biological father, and the question that has been hiding under all the funny stands up and introduces itself.
That is the book.
The title is not a diagnosis so much as the question underneath all of it: whether leaving is inherited, learned, or simply the shape a child builds from the materials he is given.
What Huck is examining is a habit of leaving. Cities, jobs, men, friendships. Brian let him move in and he packed the next morning while Brian was at work. David opened his home to him and went to Costco, and Huck was gone before he returned. Scott opened the door to him in the middle of the night and he left while Scott was sleeping. Three men, three mornings, three people finding a room he had already left. He names all three and does not build himself a single exit.
He also tells you in the preface that this is not a book about fixing it. No clean arc, no chapter where the pattern breaks and everything suddenly makes sense. Then he holds that line through three dozen essays. That might be the bravest call in the whole thing. It would have been easy to manufacture redemption. He refuses.
Some of this I am still carrying around. Pete, the dog he had before Raider, and the moment he takes back something he wrote earlier in the same book: he does know how to love, and Pete is the proof. A week after letting him go, he was playing God of War Ragnarok, hit the part where the boy's wolf dies in his arms, turned the game off and never went back.
Don't Call It A Small Life is the one I would hand somebody first. Two men side by side. Oliver, who he met in an apartment shared by four aspiring tennis players, who came out to him first, and who he got back after twenty years of silence by finally typing the name into a search bar on February 13th at 8:37 in the morning. Eleven words. And David, the retired firefighter in Vegas who kept asking him to just come, to just choose it, whose life Huck called small. I am not going to tell you where that thread goes. I will tell you that I picked up my own phone before I finished the page.
And Raider At The Door, where he lays out the only thing he wants if he dies somewhere away from home. Not a eulogy. Not flowers. Just somebody to bring his dog to him, so the dog is not left waiting at a door for a person who is never coming through it.
Then elsewhere in the same book he is standing in his own living room looking at a naked man he barely knows who has arranged poppers and lube on the coffee table, and Huck's entire concern is the couch. It is fabric. It is absorbing everything. He is not even sitting on the throw blanket.
That swing is the reason the book works. He is very funny and he never once uses the funny to get out of anything.
And the structure is doing more work than you realize at first. There is a dog waiting by a door on the dedication page, before a single essay starts, and you read it as a nice image. It is not just a nice image. By the last page it has turned back on him, and I am going to let you find out how.
Raider came to him at five weeks old, flagged with a medical issue and scheduled to be euthanized on a Saturday. Huck adopted him on a Tuesday. Raider was nearly gone before Huck found him, and he loves anyway. Huck was left, and spent a lifetime building exits. What the book does with that mirror in its final stretch is earned brick by brick, and it lands precisely because he never oversold a single thing on the way there.
The ending is quiet on purpose. No grand declaration, no bow. He is honest enough not to sell it as more than it is, and it is still the best ending this book could have had.
Boys, Bars, and Becoming was already really good. This is him building on all of it.
A gray pube, then several, spotted in a tanning booth, in the kind of light that shows everything, by a man who grew up thinking the Golden Girls at 52 were finished. A 65-inch Roku mounted two and a half inches too low because there was nobody standing behind him to say a little higher, so the top of the console is permanently unusable now. An extra Ninja Creami container bought before the Ninja Creami, by the version of himself who was already optimizing the workflow for a machine he did not own yet. The machine arrived. He made frozen chocolate chalk. Twice.
I was several essays in, comfortable, laughing, pretty sure I knew what kind of book I had.
Then he is on Facebook and one of his sister’s friends claims to be a cousin. Huck knows she isn’t. She tells Huck that his sister does not have a brother. He starts posting childhood photos as proof he exists. Four or five in, he refreshes. Page not found.
Then a DNA test tells him the man who raised him is not his biological father, and the question that has been hiding under all the funny stands up and introduces itself.
That is the book.
The title is not a diagnosis so much as the question underneath all of it: whether leaving is inherited, learned, or simply the shape a child builds from the materials he is given.
What Huck is examining is a habit of leaving. Cities, jobs, men, friendships. Brian let him move in and he packed the next morning while Brian was at work. David opened his home to him and went to Costco, and Huck was gone before he returned. Scott opened the door to him in the middle of the night and he left while Scott was sleeping. Three men, three mornings, three people finding a room he had already left. He names all three and does not build himself a single exit.
He also tells you in the preface that this is not a book about fixing it. No clean arc, no chapter where the pattern breaks and everything suddenly makes sense. Then he holds that line through three dozen essays. That might be the bravest call in the whole thing. It would have been easy to manufacture redemption. He refuses.
Some of this I am still carrying around. Pete, the dog he had before Raider, and the moment he takes back something he wrote earlier in the same book: he does know how to love, and Pete is the proof. A week after letting him go, he was playing God of War Ragnarok, hit the part where the boy's wolf dies in his arms, turned the game off and never went back.
Don't Call It A Small Life is the one I would hand somebody first. Two men side by side. Oliver, who he met in an apartment shared by four aspiring tennis players, who came out to him first, and who he got back after twenty years of silence by finally typing the name into a search bar on February 13th at 8:37 in the morning. Eleven words. And David, the retired firefighter in Vegas who kept asking him to just come, to just choose it, whose life Huck called small. I am not going to tell you where that thread goes. I will tell you that I picked up my own phone before I finished the page.
And Raider At The Door, where he lays out the only thing he wants if he dies somewhere away from home. Not a eulogy. Not flowers. Just somebody to bring his dog to him, so the dog is not left waiting at a door for a person who is never coming through it.
Then elsewhere in the same book he is standing in his own living room looking at a naked man he barely knows who has arranged poppers and lube on the coffee table, and Huck's entire concern is the couch. It is fabric. It is absorbing everything. He is not even sitting on the throw blanket.
That swing is the reason the book works. He is very funny and he never once uses the funny to get out of anything.
And the structure is doing more work than you realize at first. There is a dog waiting by a door on the dedication page, before a single essay starts, and you read it as a nice image. It is not just a nice image. By the last page it has turned back on him, and I am going to let you find out how.
Raider came to him at five weeks old, flagged with a medical issue and scheduled to be euthanized on a Saturday. Huck adopted him on a Tuesday. Raider was nearly gone before Huck found him, and he loves anyway. Huck was left, and spent a lifetime building exits. What the book does with that mirror in its final stretch is earned brick by brick, and it lands precisely because he never oversold a single thing on the way there.
The ending is quiet on purpose. No grand declaration, no bow. He is honest enough not to sell it as more than it is, and it is still the best ending this book could have had.
Boys, Bars, and Becoming was already really good. This is him building on all of it.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Date started: 04 August 2026
Date finished: 05 August 2026
The Leaving Gene, although giving off a first impression that this book will delve into a scientific and extensive analysis of how man’s tendency of leaving or avoidant behaviors suggest a biological linkage to the human genetic imprint, does not focus on such presentation. Instead, readers should expect a more humane, intimate discussion of essays that resonates more from the emotional and sentimental aspects.
Thanks to the generosity of the author and publisher, this work of art made a deep impression with me in a sense that this served as a mirror to my entirety, and how I felt seen, felt attacked, felt enraged, and yet felt understood and validated by the lessons offered by each essay. The first few pages of this book already hooked me by putting into words how I exactly feel about leaving, loss, grief, the inconvenient decisions, and the impact it creates.
The literary prose further elevated the reading experience because it felt like I was listening to my uncle’s bed time stories which, at some point made me cry, and yet at some point made me laugh due to the unhinged narratives being shared. This conversant way of presenting the essays helped the author to connect with the readers by appealing to the readers’ personal experiences and letting the explanations speak for themselves rather than actively proving a point or overexplaining the thesis statement.
I can’t wait for the physical copy of this book because there are lots of quotes that I’d be underlining. Also, there are some essays that left lasting impressions like the author’s pen-pal story with a convicted felon, the essay about the dog at the door, and the essay on rekindling the old flames from a romance that happened twenty years ago.
Finally, I liked the idea of being vulnerable with the readers and ending this literary art as an open-ended one.
Date finished: 05 August 2026
The Leaving Gene, although giving off a first impression that this book will delve into a scientific and extensive analysis of how man’s tendency of leaving or avoidant behaviors suggest a biological linkage to the human genetic imprint, does not focus on such presentation. Instead, readers should expect a more humane, intimate discussion of essays that resonates more from the emotional and sentimental aspects.
Thanks to the generosity of the author and publisher, this work of art made a deep impression with me in a sense that this served as a mirror to my entirety, and how I felt seen, felt attacked, felt enraged, and yet felt understood and validated by the lessons offered by each essay. The first few pages of this book already hooked me by putting into words how I exactly feel about leaving, loss, grief, the inconvenient decisions, and the impact it creates.
The literary prose further elevated the reading experience because it felt like I was listening to my uncle’s bed time stories which, at some point made me cry, and yet at some point made me laugh due to the unhinged narratives being shared. This conversant way of presenting the essays helped the author to connect with the readers by appealing to the readers’ personal experiences and letting the explanations speak for themselves rather than actively proving a point or overexplaining the thesis statement.
I can’t wait for the physical copy of this book because there are lots of quotes that I’d be underlining. Also, there are some essays that left lasting impressions like the author’s pen-pal story with a convicted felon, the essay about the dog at the door, and the essay on rekindling the old flames from a romance that happened twenty years ago.
Finally, I liked the idea of being vulnerable with the readers and ending this literary art as an open-ended one.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you Victory Editing for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
In a collection of personal essays, Huck Smith meditates on how the ways we learn to survive and cope follow us throughout our lives, even when we escape, even when we run, and what it costs us in at the end of the day--or, most Tuesdays.
Smith's essays are written in short, staccato like sentences, arranged not in chronological order but in a style of reflection, comparison to then versus now, reflecting how time between often blurs. He's to the point, and most essays aren't more than a few pages. This works especially well with his hilarious stories that left me cackling and teary eyed, but it hurt so much more when he delved into more personal, introspective examinations of self. Smith acknowledges that he's not trying to tie up his life neatly with a bow. These are the observations that he's made about his life, about how he stays and leaves, makes decisions and sometimes feels helpless to them. He's honest about his intentions and his writing style reflects that: here I am, here is how it is.
Smith's book is perhaps intended for an older audience, as he often reflects upon his age of fifty two throughout his essays. However, as a fumbling adult struggling to outrun and simultaneously find their place in the end of their twenties, I found a kindred spirit in his stories. For readers who are interested in trauma, in life, in how we become who we are and how we can examine that honestly, frankly, presently, I thrust The Leaving Gene upon you for consideration. If you have ever been lost. If you are still currently lost. If you don't know how you got here in the first place. There's a place for you in Smith's writing.
In a collection of personal essays, Huck Smith meditates on how the ways we learn to survive and cope follow us throughout our lives, even when we escape, even when we run, and what it costs us in at the end of the day--or, most Tuesdays.
Smith's essays are written in short, staccato like sentences, arranged not in chronological order but in a style of reflection, comparison to then versus now, reflecting how time between often blurs. He's to the point, and most essays aren't more than a few pages. This works especially well with his hilarious stories that left me cackling and teary eyed, but it hurt so much more when he delved into more personal, introspective examinations of self. Smith acknowledges that he's not trying to tie up his life neatly with a bow. These are the observations that he's made about his life, about how he stays and leaves, makes decisions and sometimes feels helpless to them. He's honest about his intentions and his writing style reflects that: here I am, here is how it is.
Smith's book is perhaps intended for an older audience, as he often reflects upon his age of fifty two throughout his essays. However, as a fumbling adult struggling to outrun and simultaneously find their place in the end of their twenties, I found a kindred spirit in his stories. For readers who are interested in trauma, in life, in how we become who we are and how we can examine that honestly, frankly, presently, I thrust The Leaving Gene upon you for consideration. If you have ever been lost. If you are still currently lost. If you don't know how you got here in the first place. There's a place for you in Smith's writing.
Review of advance copy received from Author
As a gay man in my 50s, The Leaving Gene felt less like reading someone else’s essays and more like hearing thoughts I’ve carried for years finally put into words. Huck Smith has an uncanny ability to take the quiet emotions so many of us share—the longing, nostalgia, loss, resilience, and the lives we slowly build for ourselves—and express them with honesty and grace.
One line that especially stayed with me was, “Good reasons don’t feel like exits. They feel like choices.” That simple observation captures so much about growing older, about the paths we take, and the parts of ourselves we leave behind without realizing it.
Whether he’s writing about solitude, friendship, or what it means to create a life that looks different than the one you imagined, his essays are deeply human. I found myself pausing often, not because the writing was difficult, but because it felt so familiar. This is a beautiful, poignant collection that I won’t soon forget.
One line that especially stayed with me was, “Good reasons don’t feel like exits. They feel like choices.” That simple observation captures so much about growing older, about the paths we take, and the parts of ourselves we leave behind without realizing it.
Whether he’s writing about solitude, friendship, or what it means to create a life that looks different than the one you imagined, his essays are deeply human. I found myself pausing often, not because the writing was difficult, but because it felt so familiar. This is a beautiful, poignant collection that I won’t soon forget.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Read the author’s previous work book Boys, Bars , Becoming . Great book of essays! With this book, Mr. Smith plunges into a world that shows not all of the scars and baggage we carry are visible. He also shows how those experiences are youth and growing up can affect the way we handle our personal relationships in the future. Be they good or bad.. It’s a personal set of essays that show that even as we age that we also can gain some wisdom, but realize there are many wounds that can cause us to act how the fears and apprehensions we gained as children adolescence, as well as a adulthood. It’s about the lessons learned the lessons we need to still learn and what we do with that information as we process it in 2026 it can be funny sad and scary all at the same time. It’s a fantastic work. I enjoyed reading it. It was well worth my time.
Review of advance copy received from Author
The Leaving Gene was a deeply reflective read that spoke to so many aspects of loss, leaving, and the lessons we learn by staying. Rather than focusing only on why people leave, it explores how those experiences shape the way we move through life and relationships.
What stayed with me most was its message that The Leaving Gene is ultimately less about why people leave than about what it takes to stop living. It's a moving exploration of resilience and forgiveness.
Thoughtful, emotional, and quietly hopeful, this is a book that kept me interested from the first chapter to the last. It was a great read.
What stayed with me most was its message that The Leaving Gene is ultimately less about why people leave than about what it takes to stop living. It's a moving exploration of resilience and forgiveness.
Thoughtful, emotional, and quietly hopeful, this is a book that kept me interested from the first chapter to the last. It was a great read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I relate to so much he has written in this book, life is messy, but we must keep moving forward. We need to appreciate where we are, and where we've been, and the people who've been there, both good and bad. Hopefully we grow because we have learned what is important, and don't keep doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting different results. Well written, made me think about things that sometimes I'd rather not.
Thanks for sharing your stories.
Thanks for sharing your stories.
Review of advance copy received from Author
This book changed my perspective and my life in a positive way. It showed me that I’m not alone or even abnormal. I feel like all of my shortcomings and low self worth were because of what i did or didn’t do but now i don’t feel that way. I know that it’s all part of life and i have so much to be thankful for. I look forward to more from Huck Smith
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews